Kate LaDew is a recent graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art. She was born in 1982 and resides in Graham, NC.

As a mother, poet, and poetry editor, it has been a uniquely personal experience to work with Jake. I wrote him an acceptance letter: we wanted to feature his work and do an interview. He wrote back with news of his daughter’s birth: Dec. 1, 3 PM; 7 lbs, 2 oz; 19.5 in long. “[Maddie] has huge blue eyes and a head of soft, downy blonde hair. She’s such a little angel. Unfortunately right now she’s a nocturnal angel, but we’re told she’ll get more on our schedule soon. My favorite thing is how easy she is to console - it’s like all she wants sometimes is to be held.” During the phone interview, Jake had to leave the house to find a quieter setting because Maddie was fussy. I immediately identified. Earplugs were common accessories at our house when my son was an infant.

Yet, the conversation wasn’t all parenting and poetry. Jake is a first year doctor specializing in pediatrics and a captain in the Air Force Reserves. So I was interested in his life as a military member, as a doctor. I also wanted to know how he managed to fit the practice of poetry into such a full life.

- Lisa McCool-Grime

§

Lisa: I’m really interested in your process of becoming a poet.

Jake Sheff: I always loved reading. I didn’t really get into modern poetry until my freshman year of college. I took a class on modernism and obviously read Frost, Yeats, Eliot, William Carlos Williams. I couldn’t define how it was making me feel or why it was attracting me. Something about poetry just really struck a nerve, and I wanted to not only read more but try to do it myself. In college, I wrote a few things, but I recognized that they weren’t very good. I was just imitating the guys I liked.

LMG: And who were those?

JS: Emily Dickinson. Sylvia Plath. I related to Robert Lowell a lot. I liked him because he talked a lot about being depressed and I was moodier back in early college. I also liked Wallace Stevens. Wallace Stevens I still read a lot-it’s kind of like Emily Dickinson’s poems. You read them and they really draw you in. The language is super charged and beautiful and you can sense that they are saying something profound. The poem is going to stay with you, but you can’t always put to words exactly what it is saying to you. So Wallace Stevens, I liked back then and I still do. I think people make too big a deal out of T. S. Eliot. I remember some of the first poems I tried to write I thought I had to reference the Bible somehow. I’m glad I figured out early on that that’s not always what you have to do. I’m not very well versed in that.

LMG: Where did you go from there?

JS: I gave up after awhile. I kept reading though. I got accepted to med school my final year of college. I was fortunate to be able to defer for a year. A best friend and I had wanted to go to Europe for a long time. So the plan was I would take a year off after graduating, work, live at home, go to Europe and then go off to med school. The great thing was, I went home and I got a job at Barnes & Noble in Northern Wisconsin. They had a pretty good poetry section and I read every book on the shelf. Suddenly, I wasn’t just reading things on a college syllabus, but I was reading contemporary. I would go in the magazine section and read the New Yorker and Poetry magazine. In college I was exposed to the anthologized poems. But that year home I was able to read a lot more contemporary things, and I also read things that I never got to read in college but I wanted to. I read Homer and Dante, some of the classics that never came up in class.

Then I got to med school. Going from a year off of school to medical school is a very big adjustment. You suddenly find you’re spending all your time in class, at lab or studying at home. I subscribed to some poetry magazines but didn’t try again yet to write my own. Then my fourth year-by the time you reach your fourth year of med school you’ve taken the two board exams you need to take while you’re in med school-your fourth is just about getting experience in what you like and finding a residency. So I decided to start writing again. I went online and found some poetry websites where you can take email workshops, where you can discuss writing with people. I went to the library and checked out books on writing. The first few things I wrote were pretty awful. But I started finding a process that worked for me. It was relatively quick that I went from starting to write again and having success sending them out, getting them published. I think the reason is that I read a lot of poetry starting at the age of 18. I think the fact that I had read a lot and knew what I liked and knew what I considered good made it easier for me to pick it up.

LMG: Speaking of med school, does the Air Force pay for all of it?

JS: Yeah, they footed the entire bill. While I was there, they gave me a stipend too. So I went to Guatemala for a month and worked at a clinic there. I was able to get a car. I was able to get my wife an engagement ring. All of my friends who were taking out loans were having a hard time. They were even skimping on groceries, but the military let me live a relatively comfortable life while I was in med school.

LMG: Are you planning on staying Air Force? How does that work?

JS: The way it works is that I’m in the Reserves right now. The Air Force helped me pay for medical school and in order to repay them, I work for them. I’ll be a physician for them for however many years they helped me pay for med school, so at least four. I work on a base. I’ll be a pediatrician, so I’ll be taking care of children of veterans or people who are currently in the military. Some of the larger bases have pediatric clinics. People always think it’s strange when you say, “I’m going to be a pediatrician for the Air Force” because there are no kids in the Air Force. It’s not much different from being a pediatrician in the civilian world really.

LMG: Did you go into the Air Force specifically because of what it offered for med school or did you already have an interest in military service?

J: There’s kind of two answers to that. I got lucky and went to a state public school for undergrad, so that wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But when I got into med school, I got into private school. I knew it was going to be kind of expensive. My parents said, “You’re on your own at this point.” My dad’s a doctor so I knew how long it could take to pay off some of those med school loans. So I looked for a scholarship right away. When you’re in med school, there’s two options: there’s the military and there’s another one paid for by the government for underserved locations. But I went into the Air Force for two reasons: for one, I have a lot of family in the military, and I have two cousins, one is in the marines and one is in the army. I know they all enjoyed their time with the military or are enjoying it right now. I did get offers from the Air Army and the Navy, but the Air Force particularly interested me because it was a year after Katrina when I signed up, and I always had these visions of the Air Force flying in cargo planes delivering food supplies, water, medical supplies. I had this vision of the Air Force as being not only military but also humanitarian. I thought by joining the Air Force it was a win-win because I’d get medical school paid for and then have opportunities like that to help out when there are disasters.

LMG: Do you feel now that you’re in the Air Force some of that is playing out? Or do you have different visions for yourself?

JS: The thing is that I don’t have a ton of experience yet. I’ve only been in the Reserves so far. I’ve gone to officer training which was a very interesting experience. I’ve gone down to San Antonio which has the biggest hospital in the Air Force and I had some very good experiences down there. But so far they are letting me do my medical training. When I’m ready they’ll start taking advantage of my services. Sending me places that they need me. Nothing so far-what they do in the beginning is they let you learn medicine, they take care of you and then when you’re ready, they take you.

LMG: And do you see yourself wanting to stay on even longer than the four years you’ll owe?

JS: I ask myself that every day. I can’t predict what’s going to happen while I’m with the military. I’ve heard mainly positive experiences. It will all depend on how it affects my family. Maddie-how she feels about it-moving around a lot. How my wife feels about it. We do have a desire to go back to Wisconsin at some point and be close to everyone we grew up around and there are no Air Force bases in Wisconsin. I’m always proud to say I’m a member of the military. My feeling about the military is that you are serving your country. You are taking part of an ancient tradition, protecting your country. Being a young man, being in the military feels like something so many young men have done before. But staying in longer won’t just be about how I feel, but dependent upon my wife and how my children feel.

LMG: Now you said your “children”. Does that mean you’re planning on more?

JS: Yeah, I think. My wife was an only child. I have a younger brother. My wife and I like taking care of little things. I would like a couple more. I think she’s thinking one more would be OK. It’s a little soon after the first one right now.

LMG: Speaking of children, were you able to be there for Maddie’s birth?

JS: I actually assisted in it. I didn’t deliver her, but I had gloves on and I was helping out. As a medical student and doctor, I’ve taken part in a lot of births. But I’m not sure I’d want to deliver my own baby. My dad was a doctor and he said the same thing. Leave it to the professionals.

LMG: So I am curious then. How was it different for you? Helping people birth their own babies and being there for your own child’s birth?

JS: Seeing my own wife go through it, who is my best friend-she’s everything to me-seeing her go through the pain of contractions was difficult. The one thing that comforted me was I knew that she’d recover relatively quickly, because I’ve seen women go through it and it looks awful, but a couple of days later they are up and walking. Honestly, I think that’s one of the most moving things to see in medicine is a baby being born, even when it’s not yours. Even if you’ve never met the woman until an hour before she delivers. The first time I saw a baby born I actually teared up. It’s a very moving experience always. You never get used to it. But you never lose focus. You deliver the baby. Other people take the baby away to take care of it, and you’ve got to take care of the mom. But when my baby was born-I feel bad but-I was just entranced. The doctor set her on my wife’s lap and said, “Here’s your baby,” and it was a rush of emotion, I had to cut the cord. She opened her eyes and looked at me. I saw her face for the first time. It was a very different experience. I looked and her and she didn’t look [like] any baby I’d ever seen before. A lot of newborns come out, they’re all squished and have the same look, but I completely recognized her. It was like I had already known her. It was crazy. Newborns can have a pointy head and a kind of squished face, but mine was perfect of course. I ended up following her, watching them clean her off and weigh her, and she was looking at me the whole time. I followed her for the next five or six minutes, taking pictures, smiling at her, just gushing over my first baby. I felt a little bit bad because I was looking at Maddie, and then I looked over at my wife who was still in labor, so I ran over there and got back to my assistant’s position, but for five or six minutes I [didn't] know where I was, I was all about this baby girl.

LMG: Do you have models for poets who have written about fatherhood? I’ve read so few poems about fatherhood that it seems new to me, but I’m wondering-are you feeling like this is new territory?

JS: I think a lot about what makes a poem great. Pound says, “Make it new,” and I think that’s true. When I wrote those poems about becoming a dad, I didn’t feel that I was doing that. There is a book at the local library here, a little pocket poetry anthology called “Fatherhood”. The thing that really surprised me about it is that half the poems are written by women about their dads. I haven’t thought about why there aren’t a lot of poems about being a father by male poets. I don’t know why that is. But (he laughts) I would be happy to be called one of the first poets to go into that area. So much has happened in this past year: getting poems published, becoming a doctor, but when I look back I expect it’ll be the birth of my daughter that, by far, turns out to be the most important thing this year. I know just looking at her, spending time with her, that there will be a lot more poems in the future about our relationship and about being a father.

Inner villanelle of a father-to-be without his Xanax

Father-to-be, you are not a villain.
Hell, black bile does not blackball from mating.
But you know, they’ll be your children,

and gramps paternal, pater familias and his filial
two, your brother and you, were all fated
faithless to be, to feel like God’s a villain.

It’s like Her Majesty with sons all hemophilic:
your family bred because to breed is nature
as nature was to bleed for all the queen’s children.

Ah, then your obsessive quest for the mythic “Lost Pill” –
capsule of gold, herb of hard-to-reach estate;
your fortune to be (without pillage of a village) –

was a success! Your melancholy’s Minotaur is killed.
Like Theseus’s thread from dead beast to gate
you’ll guide from labyrinthine ills your children.

In innocence, with wings unseen, they’re silly
little portraits of yourself. But when your poor traits,
Jake, come to, know you’re not a villain.
Your cure is theirs, yours are lucky children.

The Day I Met Madeleine Rae

Like an elephant with a paintbrush, the tech smears jelly all over
Corri’s belly. Inside a boy, in the green light of Christmas morning,
echogenic pictures of a toy form from pre-unwrapping rattling;
in the ex-homemaker’s mind are pretty little seeds as she is shaking
honeydew like a maraca at the market. The ultrasound today is like that:
peeking with our ears. What am I now, a dolphin or a bat?
I don’t care, at home with pink hamburgers or blue turtles
equally. And shining onscreen, the twin Suns of a world
more beautiful than anything I’ve seen: “That means girl.”

Yester girl

She says when her water breaks
she’ll cry, her blue irides will melt
like polar ice caps, flood her eyes
and fall from lids like ledges
of the horizon. My world
our daughter will be, and she will be
my yester girl, my sad wife
insists. “Our marriage is our marrow, our red cell
our daughter, the morrow girl,” I say, “but you are
my vernal Gaia, eternal Terra, and I am
your mortal boy; I live inside your bones.”

Tweak makes you ambitious. You fire off paragraph-length texts to friends you haven’t seen in months. You have marathon online chats with guys you’d love to fuck but know will flake. You disclose your extensive sexual history to men whose first names elude you. Our host Adam is higher than all the saints, has been for three days. This explains why some skinny dude stands before us, slipping off his Peanuts T-shirt with an enthusiasm that saddens me like last call on a Saturday night.

My boyfriend Curtis lies at the bottom of the mattress. He lifts his gaze, coolly appraising our unexpected guest’s likely skill on all fours. Curtis wears only a sheer pair of briefs. Its gray hue flatters his toned, tan thighs and taut abdomen. I know it’s crass, but it turns me on when Curtis flaunts his physique. It proves I’m clever. It proves I’ve earned the envy of other men. Now shirtless, the guest frankly surveys my boyfriend. He lightly rubs the bridge of his foot along Curtis’s calf. You have a great body, he says. Curtis chuckles but doesn’t thank him.

I ask the stranger his name. Thomas, he says. Like the tank engine. He laughs at his joke, my first clue he made one. He must be a smart guy or some shit. Curtis asks what’s so funny. Thomas’s smile falters. He stammers about the children’s character he had in mind. I’ve never heard of the fucker. Children disturb me. Curtis laughs, but I don’t hear joy. He asks if anyone ever laughs at that joke. Thomas mumbles and absently rubs his petite, hairy chest. I can’t make out what he says and don’t know if Curtis did. We don’t speak again until Adam returns.

Our host carries a loaded pipe. He never shows anyone where he hides his tweak. House rule. I’ve partied with him two or three times, but never questioned this. His paranoia doesn’t curb his generosity. As long as the dope keeps coming, I don’t give a fuck about its source. On the way home from our first encounter with Adam, Curtis spent the whole ride speculating where he hid his goods. He vowed to suck Adam’s dick so hard and long, the bastard would spill. I watched Curtis do just that at our next gathering, but Adam opened his mouth only to moan, nothing more. Adam asks Thomas if he’s high and learns he gorged Adderall last night. I’m surprised this fucker could be high on a drug I’ve never tried. It’s a stimulant medication for ADHD, Thomas explains. Way more powerful than meth. I want to ask if he has any left, but that might lead to more talk. I might have to suck him to keep the peace, but I won’t start before I must.

Thomas shucks off his cargo shorts, steps over Curtis and sits in the center of the mattress. Adam curls up in the far corner, elbow propped on the brick-and-plywood structure that serves as a low nightstand. Four men on one mattress, but we don’t touch, not at all. We pass the pipe. Adam jams at least three decent-sized crystals into the bowl each time, so the pipe makes numerous rounds.

Adam asks Thomas why he’s shaking. I look at our guest. Indeed, his hands tremble as he lights the pipe and sucks the stem. His tremor is so pronounced, I wonder if he gets any smoke when he sucks. After he exhales, Thomas assures us it’s just a side effect of the Adderall. It only flares up with fine motor movement, he says. I can still suck dick like I’m getting paid, he boasts, laughing again. Thomas blocks my view of Curtis, but I imagine my boyfriend’s sour look after hearing that. What exactly had Adam promised Thomas when they chatted online before his long trek to Dallas? Why hadn’t Adam consulted Curtis or me before making these promises?

After we cash the pipe, Adam stands and asks Curtis to follow. My boyfriend stretches, arms high above his head, toes flexed. Watching him tease Adam by pretending Adam bores him totally turns me on. Curtis knows I don’t care if Adam desires him more than me. This is Adam’s house, but I hold all the power. With a jerk of my head, I can swiftly end Adam’s little fantasy, and Adam knows it. I don’t realize until a few moments later that I’m alone with our guest. What was his name? Trevor? The guy looks at me, his lips mashed together yet not quite smiling. I have no clue how Adam plans to incorporate this skinny fucker into our playtime, but I decide empty chit-chat might distract him until Adam reveals his bonehead brainstorm.

I ask him what’s in Tyler. Roses, he says. Roses and bigots. Why doesn’t he move? Moving costs money, he says. He asks if there’s any dope left. I shrug and retrieve my laptop from the floor. Before Thomas arrived, while Adam puttered elsewhere, I reviewed my latest blog, admiring it. Curtis lay at the foot of the mattress, gazing at the ceiling. He knows I need quality time with my work. I’m a writer. I doubt you’ve heard of me. I write about whatever I want. Smoking dope greases the gears, helps the words flow. My latest post is about the not guilty verdict in that trial where the white trash bitch was accused of drowning her two-year-old. It’s stupid so many obsessed over that for weeks and weeks. I keep track of how many hits I receive each day. Not even Curtis knows the exact figure. I love the fucker, but I don’t tell him everything.

Thomas asks what I’m reading. I tell him it’s personal shit. I try to leave it at that, but I can’t help myself. I’ll tell anyone about my writing. First, though, I ask him to repeat his name. It’s okay, he says, laughing. I hate his laugh, how it stutters like a broke-down pickup. I don’t remember yours, either. That’s because I never told you, I snap. Thomas tries to smile, but I know his feelings are hurt. For whatever reason, I feel shitty watching his eyes dart back and forth, unsure where to look. I’m Bart, I tell him. Like Bart Simpson. Thomas laughs, slaps his thighs. I have a T-shirt that’s the top half of Homer’s head! He smiles at me so wide and earnest, I can’t return his gaze. Where did Adam find this retard? Too bad the show’s not funny anymore, Thomas says. I grunt, return my eyes to the screen.

We don’t speak. Thomas busies himself positioning the lighter at various angles to the bowl, trying to scare up more smoke. I peck at the keyboard. I basically forget about him until he asks if I want to read something. It’s real short, he adds. Only 400 words. I’m a writer too, he says, as if revealing secret code beneath enemy watch. I ask what he writes. Short stories, he says. Four hundred words is real damn short, I say, too high to keep my derision in check. I can’t remember the last short story I read. High school, probably. Every asshole knows real writers write books, like the kind you buy at Wal-Mart. He asks to see the laptop. Why not kill another two minutes while we wait for Adam and Curtis to finish sucking dick or whatever? When he returns it, the browser presents a sort of literary website with its title stretched across the top of the screen and ads for books draped down each side. Below the banner and a horizontal menu, I see what I assume is his story. It’s called “Put Your Hands Together.” Before the story begins, a dedication appears: for my dearest Mike. It hadn’t occurred to me this bozo might have a boyfriend. Thomas stares at me intently, like he wants to read my mind. I shake it off and begin.

The narrator buys some dope from his dealer. He mentions briefly that his lover is dead but then spends the story’s first half describing his high. I’ve never read a story written by a tweaker that’s about a tweaker. I don’t want the whole world knowing what I do with strangers. All the fags in the party scene have an unspoken pact. Society wouldn’t understand. Another reason to condemn us. I keep reading.

Suddenly, the dead lover appears, like a mirage. The narrator begs him to stay forever. The dead lover rambles about Peter Pan and urges the narrator to start clapping. Your emotions can go haywire when tweaked. Big storms of bad feelings kick up inside you at the worst possible moment. I never think to stop reading. I glance briefly at Thomas and find him still staring my direction, rude bastard.

The last paragraph reads: I pound my palms together. The harsh staccato of flesh against flesh scampers through my apartment. It’s the only noise in the room. I remember the last time he said he loved me, over the phone when he was drunk. One day I will forget his voice. I keep clapping and Jeremy keeps grinning.

I think of the men I’ve lost. None of them died, but I’ll never see them again. I ponder how things will end with Curtis. I’m not a dumbass. Men like him don’t play for keeps, only till the fun flickers out. Thomas had pinpointed the pain I believed would vanish if never acknowledged. What do you think, he chirps like a flight attendant. Fucking intense, I say. It took me ages to write a story about Mike that didn’t suck, he says, chuckling. Thanks for the feedback, he says and runs his fingers down my arm. He resumes trying to conjure smoke from the pipe. I must be a guinea pig to him. He will forget me the moment we toss his ass.

Since Thomas remains busy with the pipe, I read again. I won’t show this to Curtis. One day I will forget the sound of his voice. I concentrate, shut my eyes and recall Curtis’s voice. What did he last say? Fucking tweak, I can’t remember. What if he never returns? How would I keep his memory alive? I pray for Curtis and Adam to return. I don’t care if Curtis spent the whole time working Adam’s dick. The sooner they get back, the sooner I can convince them Thomas must go.

Hey, Tyler boy. Thomas and I both find Adam in the doorway. Sorry I’m obsessing over this pipe, Thomas says, crimson blazing his cheeks. No worries, Adam says. Let me show you something in the other room. Thomas springs from the mattress and scampers away, Adam vanishing with him. A moment later, Curtis saunters inside, stops at the foot of the mattress. I’m determined to conceal the turmoil seizing my gut. My boyfriend is sexy as hell, he makes me laugh, I love parading him before the other fags at the club on weekends. I don’t trust him, though, and I doubt he trusts me. What does Adam want with the reject, I ask. Curtis crouches upon the mattress, runs his hand along my leg, calf to thigh. I want him to grab my dick, get me hard, anything to obliterate that story.

Curtis says he persuaded Adam that Thomas was a mistake. I ask if Adam finds him attractive. Curtis assures me in his mesmerizing purr that our problem will soon disappear. He doesn’t offer details, and I don’t ask. Did the poor bastard make a move, Curtis asks. I know how to end this exchange. I pull my boyfriend’s face toward mine and we kiss, our mouths opening the moment they meet, tongues wild and heedless. Curtis finally pulls away, gasps for air. Sweat shines on our faces, our shoulders, our chests. Trust me, Curtis says. In less than an hour, you won’t remember that fucker.

Curtis and I show restraint waiting for Adam and Thomas to do whatever Adam thinks might hasten his departure. It’s impossible to track time when you’re tweaked. I simply held Curtis, our breaths falling into sync. We’ve been together six months. This is a considerable time for me, but Curtis doesn’t know. He rarely expresses curiosity about my life before him. That might worry me were I not eager to hide my unpleasant history. Our friends tease that we’re still in the physical phase of our romance. One day, perhaps soon, the frantic sex will subside, whether tweaked or not. I know how this story ends. Curtis will likely shift, like a pianist from key to key, over to a new man. There will be no anger, no tears. I’ve survived the party scene over seven years. A simple rule: nothing lasts long. One day I will forget the sound of his voice. Yes, I’ll forget, and I won’t tell a soul. I may be a writer, but I know shame. I don’t display my grief for anyone with a modem.

Adam returns alone. I learn Thomas sits on the patio smoking a cigarette. As if on cue, Curtis leaves my embrace and chirps that he must want company. This is it. The plan has commenced. Bart, follow me outside, my boyfriend says. Adam has shit to take care of. His command stuns me. What part would I play since neither he nor Adam had divulged the plan? Curtis, however, is the most experienced man from our trio. Well into his thirties, he’s orbited the scene over a decade. I place my faith in his skill. We cross the living room, a big-screen television playing a porn DVD as if on reflex, and slip through the sliding glass door to the patio. Thomas sits in one of the wrought-iron chairs, puffing a Salem. Before he can express surprise, Curtis informs him they need to chat. He sits across from Thomas in another high-backed iron chair. I remain standing, tucked away beside a tall shrub. Curtis never intended for me to help him. My role is strictly to witness. He likes to prove how I need him. I pray Thomas doesn’t mention his story.

Thomas laughs, hikes his foot upon the small, high table between Curtis and himself. When the axe falls, it falls with a whisper, he says. His smile disturbs me. There’s no doubt or hesitation in it. I’ve watched men get bounced from fuck parties before. Hell, I’ve been bounced myself once or twice. Thomas keeps smiling, says nothing. Curtis exhales and brings his hands together as if to pray. His gaze cuts high to meet Thomas’s bright glare. This isn’t working, he says. It’s nothing personal, believe me. I’ve been in your position. More than once. I’m really sorry. I admire how congenial Curtis sounds, like a teenager in a box office announcing the new blockbuster has sold out. Thomas nods and offers his thanks that Curtis delivered the news with such class. That’s the word he uses: class.

As Thomas takes the last drag from his menthol and puts it out, Curtis offers him his phone number. I’m sure my face betrays my surprise. Fortunately, the two men have forgotten me. Thomas, himself, draws back in confusion. Why would you do that, he asks. Call me if you want, Curtis replies. Fumbling for words, Thomas expresses his gratitude, and the three of us go inside. I scurry toward Adam’s bedroom.

It’s safe in there, neither Curtis nor Thomas can unnerve me. Before I make it, however, Thomas thanks me for reading. I hardly bother with a reply, simply dart into the bedroom and collapse upon the mattress. I wait. On my laptop, his story still appears. Curtis is a master of this shameful sect of men, but he can’t remove Thomas from this room. I jab at the keyboard until another webpage appears. I hope Curtis won’t ask what Thomas meant.

When the front door shuts. I listen for Curtis’s footsteps. I hold my breath until I hear them stop and find him posed in the doorway, shoulders askew, propped against a bent arm. Confidence, I crave confident men. I ask him where Adam disappeared this time. Curtis shrugs, announces he doesn’t give a fuck and leaps on top of me. He’s a large man, tall and muscled. I imagine what it might feel like to smother beneath him. He kisses me, wraps his arms around my smaller frame. Perhaps it’s my body that rouses him—or the success of his scheme to eject Thomas. Whatever the reason, his touch feels the same. The tweak makes us sweat, makes us ravenous. I lose myself to overwhelming pleasure. Another weekend of killer dope and marathon sex. I need nothing else.

One day I will forget the sound of his voice.

The line slips inside my brain. As Curtis ravages me, it repeats…in my own voice. Curtis doesn’t notice my distress, how I clutch him as if I might zip toward heaven like a firecracker. He’ll never love me. His lips migrate down my throat. The man we forced onto the interstate loved Mike so proudly he shared his grief with the world. He shared it with me. I might receive such love one day. There’s still time, I’m still young. My cock stiffens inside Curtis’s grip. It must be easy to love a dead man.

Thomas Kearnes 35-year-old author form East Texas. He is an atheist and an Eagle Scout. His fiction has appeared in PANK, Storyglossia, Night Train, Pindeldyboz, SmokeLong Quarterly, JMWW Journal, Word, Riot, Ecelctcia, wigleaf, The Pedestal, 3 AM Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Underground Voices, LITnIMAGE, Knee-Jerk and elsewhere. He has also published in numerous queer publications. He is a columnist for Flash Fiction Chronicles and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He is currently at work on a website documenting his career. Until then, he can be reached at trkearnes@yahoo.com.

Josh Bauer received an M.F.A from Portland State University. His most recent publications are The Broken Plate and Green Mountains Review.

“1977 film in which Luke Skywalker uses the Force in the struggle between the royal houses of York & Lancaster.”

I know this one. “Before & After” is the category; I do well on these clues anyway, but my obsessive preparation for the Jeopardy! College Championship audition led me to go over all the questions and answers (or rather, answers and questions) of the past five years of championship games. This clue was used in 2004.

I’m in a hotel conference room filled with students from Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cornell, Boston College, and other suitably intimidating schools. When we introduced ourselves, I had to explain where the College of Saint Rose is located (Albany, New York), because only one student from University at Albany had ever heard of it. Everyone is poised and brilliant and fiercely competitive, with the exception of one guy who claims his main interest is movies but, when asked to name a favorite, can’t think of a single good film he’s seen.

My hand shoots up. I have to answer this. These are only the warm-up questions, but I need to make my mark early.

“What is Star Wars of the Roses?” I say, knowing there’s no possible way I can be wrong. And I’m not.

This is what I’ve been training for my whole life: the ultimate trivia competition. I may not be able to run a five-minute mile, and small children laugh at my attempts at drawing, but I can name all 120 Crayola crayon colors and 35 places of pi, and I will happily school you on obscure movies starring Robert Downey, Jr. Being on Jeopardy! is my Everest—I’m determined to conquer it.

In October 2008, my father sent me an email mentioning that he heard about an online test for the College Championship while watching Jeopardy!, and suggested that I take it. The test was nerve-racking. You had to ensure that your Internet connection wasn’t going to crap out in the middle of the test, because there were 50 questions, but only fifteen seconds to answer each one. That didn’t leave a lot of time to dither around with my wireless router. I sat on the couch in the apartment I shared with my cousin, Emily, thankful that she wasn’t around as I muttered to myself about Mormon leaders and U.S. capitals, trying desperately to answer each clue before the next popped up.

A few weeks later, I had nearly forgotten about the test in the chaos surrounding midterms, so I was elated to discover an email from the Jeopardy! Contestant Department, inviting me to an in-person audition at the Westin Copley Place hotel in Boston on Saturday, November 8.

I spent the night before the audition sleeping over at my aunt and uncle’s house in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Sleeping’s not quite the right term. I was given my cousin Matt’s bedroom and proceeded to spend hours trying to stop my brain from worrying, while Matt and his brother George stayed up until four in the morning watching Lady Gaga videos on YouTube in the living room next door.

At breakfast at Au Bon Pain this morning, I couldn’t stop trembling long enough to enjoy my lemon poppyseed muffin. When we gathered in the hallway outside the conference room before the audition began, the other students said they were nervous, too. Coming from some of them, it seemed merely a gesture to fit in with the crowd. What did someone who went to Harvard and had worked with orphans in the Sudan have to be nervous about? There was nothing they needed to prove, the evidence of their academic success taken care of with a mention of their Ivy League school. I love Saint Rose, but attending the college has never lent me any credibility outside of the Albany area.

For the benefit of all the contestants, whether they are truly nervous or not, the contestant coordinators at the audition do their best to lighten the mood in the room. Maggie Speak is the head coordinator. She is effortlessly funny and talks like words are going out of style. I, on the other hand, try to make jokes when feeling anxious, and end up coming off socially awkward.

My best show of confidence now is my self-proclaimed “smart girl” outfit, which includes a corduroy blazer and my Tina Fey-esque horn-rimmed glasses. As it happens, when it comes time for my mock Jeopardy! round against two other students, my appearance is what is commented on first during my interview with the coordinators.

“You know, we were sitting here while you were taking the written test, trying to figure out who you look like,” Maggie tells me. “I think it’s the chick in the Iron Man movie—what’s her name? Pepper Potts.”

I know how to answer questions about my major or where I grew up; I don’t know what to say when someone tells me I resemble Gwyneth Paltrow. I certainly never envisioned Alex Trebek comparing me to ‘the chick in the Iron Man movie.’ So I just blush and reply, “Thanks.”

“Pepper Potts is the character, though, right? Why can’t I remember the name of that actress?”

“Gwyneth Paltrow,” I supply, trying to be helpful.

“That’s it! Yeah, you’ve got the red hair and everything.”

“Although Gwyneth Paltrow isn’t a natural redhead,” I comment.

As soon as the words are out, I cringe. It was meant to be a funny little dig at a famous movie star, but instead makes me sound like I have a high opinion of myself and my naturally red hair.

“We can’t all be so lucky,” she answers gracefully, and moves on to ask me those questions I do know, about my major and hometown. I feel those Ivy League eyes boring into my head, hear the whirring of those genius minds as they wonder, “Who does she think she is?”

My overachieving self can’t handle much scrutiny. I have a long history of fixating on whether I’m smart enough, or perfect enough, or even just capable enough not to overtly suck at whatever it is I’m doing. I once cried in second grade because I couldn’t draw a good pine tree. I still remember the day in seventh grade when Andy Verona gloated about getting a better score on a test than me. When there were two valedictorians and six salutatorians in my high school class and my GPA ranked me third, I was depressed for days. Since college, I’ve been better, but the specter of my past as a National Merit Finalist and school spelling bee champion often creeps up on me and brings all those neurotic tendencies to the forefront again.

Why the hell am I trying out for Jeopardy!, anyway? A show based on competing to see who is “smarter,” or at least, who possesses a better memory for random information, is hardly the catalyst I need to loosen up and learn to accept my talents and my limitations.

But then we begin playing. Holding our complimentary Jeopardy! pens as pretend signaling devices, the other two students and I focus on the clues as they are projected on a screen. This is real. I’m picking categories “for $200, please” and answering in the form of a question. I’m still terrified, but after correctly answering a clue about the Wayans brothers, I feel a little thrill of superiority. The MIT kid next to me got that one wrong.

I don’t know on November 8 that, a few months later, I will receive another email from the Jeopardy! Contestant Department that thanks me for auditioning, but informs me that I am not selected for the College Championship. It won’t be unexpected. With only 16 slots for contestants and nearly 60 people trying out in Boston alone, I can hardly anticipate that I will be chosen.

It’s okay. I’ve discovered that I’m perhaps too high-strung for the world of game shows. This won’t discourage me from trying again someday, though. I think of it this way: Only about 2700 people have ever climbed Mount Everest, but it’s always there, waiting for that 2701st person to come. So it will be with Jeopardy! and me.

Mary Catherine Owen was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1988. She now lives in Albany, New York, where she is finishing her MA in English at the College of Saint Rose. Her work has previously appeared in Defenestration.

loving that boy: screams and statues
flash-frozen against a night sky bleached white.

You and I are flesh. We slam together under a disco ball
moon that shreds the clouds. Our verbing legs reverb rhythm.

Light gilds your teeth. Another house shatters. The radio wobbles.
Chuck D. demands we fight the power and my hips swivel

a battle cry. As long as our feet pound
ground we’re alive. The night shines. We explode.

We blink out the shine and darkness re-dawns.
The alarms die. Evening spreads: a patient bleeding on a table.

No ether. Dogs bark. I catch your mouth
with mine, eat vapor, and know tonight we die.

Ki Russell is currently a doctoral candidate in the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s English department where she also serves as poetry co-editor of Rougarou: an Online Literary Journal. Outside of academia, Ki has a wonderful son and husband who put up with her eccentricities with pretty good humor. She often steals time from sludging through academic drear to wrestle with words, converse with a gray cat, and paint. She believes people should laugh more. Her work has appeared in places such as Fifth Wednesday Journal, Rio Grande Review, Sugar House Review, and in the forthcoming anthology Moment of Change (Aqueduct Press). She has a chapbook entitled How to Become Baba Yaga published by Medulla Publishing in October 2011.

Linda and Roger weren’t married anymore. They weren’t officially divorced yet, either, but it was only a matter of time. And she’d only invited Roger over to co-sign on the loan for the art gallery she was trying to open. Neither sex with him, nor his sudden death at the ripe age of forty-three, had been on the agenda.

To make sure the kids were sleeping—neither wanted to confuse them or give them the wrong idea—Roger had arrived late, revealing, as he kicked off his cowboy boots and rolled back the sleeves of his flannel, a wry smile and a bottle of Jameson’s held out like a bouquet of fragrant lilies. “I know I came for official business and all that, but, hey, let’s have a drink first, okay?” he’d said. “For old time’s sake.” He went to the kitchen, took out some glasses, and poured them each a shot.

And as usual, since the night they’d met on a dark dance floor at a club a stone’s throw from the University of Memphis, where Linda earned a degree in Art History and Roger one in Business, whiskey and Roger proved to be irresistible trouble.

It wasn’t long before they were kissing on the couch like teenagers. “Let’s go upstairs, Lin,” he said.

“But the kids!”

“They can watch,” he replied and she tried not to laugh. It was such a Roger thing to say and the laugh was partially nostalgic.

“The papers,” she muttered, “you came over to sign the papers,” but she hadn’t been pushing him away, in fact had frantically been tonguing his ear and kneading his bicep.

“Bring em upstairs,” he added, “kinky foreplay,” Linda giggling now as Roger snaked up the back of her sweater and unsnapped her bra, at which point she’d come unglued and started pawing at his zipper. Linda knew that since their separation a year-and-a-half ago, Roger, who’d always been handsome, had dated on and off and had probably helped himself to plenty of single older guy sex. But Linda, who’d kept the kids and worked full time as a curator at the local university’s art museum, hadn’t been on a date, let alone gotten laid, in all that time. While they made piles of their clothes and fell into the bed they shared for so many years, the loan papers ended up on her dresser—unsigned, castrated, bereft.


Downstairs, the kids were making breakfast. A family breakfast. For in the eyes of Linda and Roger’s ten-year-old daughter Skye, the sight of her father’s blue pick-up in the driveway this morning, glimpsed when she went out to get the paper for her mother, meant only one thing: her parents were finally getting back together. She believed it instantly—the way children do—deep into her milky bones.

“Mom! Dad!” Skye shouted, if only because she liked the sound of her voice rocketing through the house.

She’d already made her mother’s coffee, its adult scent like a dark bird in the room, and was now measuring oil and adding it to flour and egg and baking powder, Betty Crocker splayed on the counter, pancakes on her brain. Since her parents had separated, Skye had been doing more and more cooking and she wanted to show off for her dad.

The kitchen had become her favorite room in the house. The place she felt the most comfortable. It was a room that honored the way she felt older than she was. That made plenty of space for her constant companions order and predictability, both on short supply in her life at large, but, she’d found, abundant here where things were listed, measured, and timed. On the floor behind her, a portable video game system two inches from his face, sat her brother Caleb, lips wrestling, thumbs attacking, his slim back arched into a kitchen island whose countertop was three inches of pink marble, which Skye knew their father, a contractor, had ordered special. Skye liked that the kitchen was decked out in shiny new stainless steel appliances and was full of big picture windows that let in lots of light. She knew her dad had built the house with her mom’s tastes in mind. Big, open, finely detailed. Her mom had lived in France for a year growing up and often spoke about falling in love with the pointed arches and picturesque rooflines of its cathedrals. Skye could almost remember the building of the house seven years ago. But now she occasionally heard her mother muse that the house felt too big for just the three of them and seemed, at times, embarrassingly ornate. She’d even once heard talk of moving, which had horrified her.


Linda’s head was still a bit woozy from the whiskey and she felt a million miles from the dark and unexpected sweetness of last night. She looked again at Roger’s body, the stillness of it. He’d been breathing when she nodded off—lightly snoring, even—she was sure of that. She remembered thinking that she needed to tell him to leave, to go home so the kids wouldn’t wake up to him there because it would be so confusing. It had felt important, yet just out of reach. And then she’d been out. He must have died some time during the night. She’d heard of people dying in their sleep, though had never thought about what could kill a person so quietly it didn’t even wake someone sleeping next to them.

Though it made her feel guilty, she stole a glance at the unsigned loan papers—the whole reason the charming son of a bitch had come over in the first place. For Linda, the loan was the end. The moment they were no longer husband and wife, no longer lovers. Just old friends. She knew a formal divorce would follow, and though it had taken some time to get used to the idea, not to mention the word divorce itself, she’d become fine with all of it: going their separate ways, sharing the kids, the almost strange lack of hard feelings. And now, she’d gone and fucked him to death, and lost her money in the process. The whole thing was like a strange and powerful dream.

After one final look at the snarled carpet of dark hair on Roger’s chest, the inflated caterpillar of his flaccid penis, the flatness of his big man feet, Linda slid the bed sheet up and over his forehead.


“The trick with pancakes,” instructed Skye, who’d always sounded twice her age no matter what age she was, “is to have the batter be just right. It can’t be too thick. Or too thin. Too thick and the pancakes will never cook through. Too thin and they’ll burn.”

“I like French Toast better,” said Caleb, pushing up the dark glasses he’d only recently started wearing and complained about incessantly, even though Skye knew her brother had been pretending to be able to see for a long time, misreading passages in books, receiving occasional notes home from school.

“You just want whatever you don’t have,” Skye said. “It’s so childish. I wonder where they are.”

“They’re not gonna be our mom and dad again, you know,” said Caleb.

Skye glared at him. For a second she thought he was just getting a rise out of her, which she knew wasn’t very hard to do and that this was precisely the kind of comment to do it, but she could tell now that he was being sincere and was trying to protect her, which he did occasionally, and especially lately.

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true, Skye. Just don’t get your hopes up, okay? It might not mean what you think it means.”

“Stop being so pessimistic.”

Caleb shrugged.

Quantities of milk and brown sugar and salt were added to the bowl and Skye flipped on the mixer.


Upstairs Linda, who couldn’t seem to muster the courage or clarity to leave her room, sat on the bed’s edge, a hunk of white sheet in her fist, her bottom lip between her teeth. She was looking at the wall, only it looked different than usual. It was a soft blue that Roger had sworn wouldn’t look canary but had looked canary anyway. Only now it didn’t look so bright, so cloying as it had, did it? Maybe it had faded. Maybe she just had been too busy to notice. Could paint really fade so fast?

Since Linda had woken up to find her husband dead a half hour ago she’d paced the room fifteen times, still naked, her breasts and vagina sore from their first non-manual go-round in eighteen months. With each turn around the room, she’d eyed the papers, then finally grabbed the damn things and sat back down. On the floor beside his socks and underwear sat Roger’s pants; a ballpoint pen stuck out of one of the pockets. All she had to do was forge his signature in three places and the loan would be hers. Easy. After all, before they separated she’d done the books for his small business, as well as the family taxes every April, and could see every twist of his looping lazy signature in her mind. She knew that in size and scope the loan and the gallery it represented paled in comparison with Roger’s death, yet, it was incredible how the loan urged itself forward, fawning for her attention.


Skye opened the trashcan and shook a couple of inedible black discs out of the pan. “I always burn the first ones,” she moaned, “I can never get the heat right! Maybe the batter’s too thin. Maybe not. I can never tell. I followed the recipe. Pancakes always sound so easy until I actually make them. They’re actually quite hard to do well. Where are they? I don’t hear them walking around anymore. Do you hear them?”

“Maybe they went back to sleep?” Caleb said with a shrug. He was now standing across the kitchen from his sister eating a piece of bacon and drinking a glass of two percent milk, and like Skye, wore sweatpants and a t-shirt sponsoring the university where his mom worked. Together, they looked like two people awaiting a train whose arrival seemed less and less likely.

“They’re not sleeping, dummy,” Skye said, “it’s eight-thirty. Mom never sleeps past seven-thirty, even on Saturdays.”

“How do you remember stuff like that? You remember the weirdest things.”

“I don’t know. I just do,” Skye said, then shouted, “Mom! Dad!”


“Just a second!” Linda immediately shouted back, terrified her daughter might give in to what sounded like a bout of particularly urgent curiosity, might come upstairs, might find her.

She’d pulled the bed sheet back down, then flipped Roger, whose weight seemed to have doubled, over onto his stomach and straddled him from the back like a jockey, pinning the pen clumsily between his limp fingers with her own, the loan papers strategically positioned on the nightstand where his arm could reach. Part of her knew what she was doing was morbid and creepy, not to mention highly illegal. The same part of her knew too how unnecessary it was, knew that she could simply forge the papers without even making contact with Roger, get her loan, collect her money, open her gallery, and go on with her life. After all, she was the only one who would ever know the difference. She wasn’t even sure why, then, as she sat there atop his back, wiggling his fingers across the line beside the X, it seemed so necessary to bring Roger’s actual hand into play, to involve him in this so physically. Only that it did.

She’d already “signed” twice, now the frantic flipping of papers and the necessary third, then she hopped off, covered Roger back up and put on some yoga pants and a tank top. And then started shaking. Of course, she’d have to call 911. And she’d have to leave this room eventually.


Their stomachs growling audibly, the minutes limping like hours, Skye and Caleb sat silently at the dining room table like an old married couple who no longer needed to make polite conversation. To be funny, Skye had poured them each a small mug of coffee and added heaping spoonfuls of cream and sugar.

“It’s not that bad,” Skye said, smiling as she drank.

“That’s because you put a pound of sugar in it,” Caleb said, drinking some more of his, “now it’s like…coffee Kool Aid.”

They burst out laughing, which broke the tension, then heard, finally, footsteps on the stairs. A knot tightened in Skye’s stomach. She held her breath.

Benjamin Roesch is a novelist and short story writer who lives in Burlington, Vermont, where he lives with his wife and two sons, Felix and Leo. His work has recently appeared in Monkey Bicycle, Word Riot, Brilliant Corners, and Seven Days. He is delighted to be appearing in Splinter Generation for the first time.

J. Joseph Kane likes to imitate mountains by cracking his knuckles, He does this mostly in the Michigan area, which is, paradoxically, pretty flat. He is a graduate of Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant (a half misnomer). His work is forthcoming in RHINO and has previously found good company in Elimae, Clapboard House, Cricket Online Review, Right Hand Pointing, Central Review, Temenos, and the anthology River Poems from Lilly Press.

I stood on the Hawthorne Bridge overlooking the Willamette River and imagined my death. I felt the chill on my tear-streaked cheeks as the wind blew against them. The feeling of being suspended in time dulled my senses. I tried to call my boyfriend. No answer. Maybe next time he’ll answer. I called again. No answer. I left a message and hung up.

My next phone call was to my mom who, unlike my boyfriend, was waiting for my call. I knew it would not be an easy conversation. I watched the river ripple as the breeze lightly agitated the water. I dialed my mom’s work number and held my breath. As soon as she answered, I blurted out “I don’t really know how to say this, but I have thyroid cancer.” I heard a sharp intake of breath and she said, “What does that mean?” Which meant, “Are you going to die?” I said I didn’t know because the doctors still needed to tell me what type of thyroid cancer I had and whether or not it had spread to my lymph nodes.

My mom did not cry. I babbled on about how I should learn to be okay with dying, and that if I did die, I would need a will and thank goodness I didn’t have a husband to leave behind to take care of the kids that I also didn’t have. I let those thoughts run away with me and got off the phone to stare out at the river. I dialed my boyfriend again and got the same, no response. My chest felt like it needed to explode.

That night I had a conversation with my dad about my diagnosis. He told me he loved me. I’ve only heard this from my father a handful of times. We talked about how uncertain life is. The fact that a person is more likely to die in a car accident than from a plane crash did nothing for me. I had never entertained the thought that I might one day have cancer. That happened to unhealthy people. All I could think of was–when did I become a cancer patient? And how, at age thirty-one? It invaded my identity.

Talking about my possible death with someone thirty years older than me baffled me. My dad could talk about it though. My mother, on the other hand, could only get lost in the feeling that I was going to be okay, that I had to be okay. She was the optimist. Not that my dad was the pessimist; no, I think he was the realist. I teetered between the extremes. One moment I planned my next adventure, looking towards the future, and the next I had fallen off the bridge into a black hole.

The way this whole thing unraveled confused me; it was the first of a string of slow revelations. At a routine exam with my gynecologist, a slightly overweight man, checked my neck and felt a small bump on my thyroid. He said I should get an ultrasound, but he didn’t think it was anything to be worried about. For the first time in my medical history, I did not worry.

Two weeks later, in mid-September of 2009, I went to my ultrasound appointment. The waiting room was empty except for an elderly couple that sat a few seats away from me. The ultrasound tech told me her name was Portia. I had never met someone named Portia before.

Portia kept slathering gel on my neck. Soon it felt like twenty slugs had slowly slogged across it. After she had taken enough pictures the radiologist came in and I wiped away the slimy gel. The radiologist was tall and slender, his movements were awkward and I watched as he fiddled with the images on the computer screen only he could see. I said, “It seems like you found something.” Then, the radiologist told me that I had thyroid cancer, and they would have to perform a biopsy to get more detailed information, but he was certain I had cancer. Portia said, “If you have to get cancer, this is the best kind to get.” The radiologist nodded in agreement. The synapses in my brain felt like they were slowing down, and I wondered if Portia was waiting for me to give her a high-five because I was lucky enough to get the “best kind of cancer”.

During the next couple of months I found out that I had papillary thyroid cancer, in my thyroid and two of the three lymph nodes that were biopsied. This meant I needed surgery, a thyroidectomy. It lasted six and a half hours, during which my thyroid and all of the lymph nodes on the right side of my neck (fifteen of forty-two came back positive for cancer), were removed. I started taking thyroid medication on a daily basis; it regulates things like: the rate of metabolism, how quickly the body uses energy and calcium levels, and body temperature and weight. These were things I never thought about before being diagnosed.

After the surgery, instead of chemotherapy, I had radioactive iodine treatment (RAI) to remove any of the remaining disease. RAI targets thyroid cancer cells and kills them. It entails a special low iodine diet (includes no dairy, no soy, no sea salt, no sea products, and no fun) before taking the radioactive iodine pill. The diet depletes your body of iodine so that the radioactive iodine has a better chance of finding the cancer and killing it. The first week of the diet was the easiest. After that, the battle of food cravings and mental clarity was on, gladiator style.

People who get this treatment must be in isolation for two days and then semi-isolation for five more so as not to expose others to unwanted radiation. The RAI pill makes you radioactive. Since I lived in an apartment that shared walls with two other apartments, my endocrinologist set up a two-day hospital stay. I had a list of precautions for my radioactive state, such as making sure to flush the toilet two to three times after each use, washing my hands often, and taking at least two showers a day.

The walls and floor of my hospital room were covered in heavy paper or plastic. Everything was wrapped up–even the bed rails and the TV controller were wrapped. Any books or clothes I had brought with me to wear would be thrown in the toxic waste bin that sat next to my bed. I had a toxic waste bin by the side of my bed.

The nurse made sure that I understood I could not walk out of the room once I had taken my pill. I could call for assistance, but anyone who entered had to stay at least ten feet away from me. There was a time limit for how long someone could be around me and how close he/she could get to me. I didn’t think it would bother me, but after just a few hours, sitting in such a strangely sterile place, made me feel a little crazy.

The nurse gave me a hospital gown, but I brought a few pairs of pajamas and underwear that I could throw away. Once I got settled, someone from the nuclear medicine department wheeled in a cart that had a short steel tube on it. I felt like a character in Huxley’s A Brave New World, but I knew I was not about to take a soma pill.

The nuclear med. person opened a metal tube with tongs and revealed a plastic tube with two little blue encased pills in it. She used the tongs to pick up the plastic tube and dump the pills into a paper cup, next to it was another paper cup filled with water. At this point I felt like Alice from Alice in Wonderland. I hoped to shrink after swallowing the pills and be able to sneak out through a hole in the wall to a tea party with the Mad Hatter. The nuclear med. person told me she would be back later with a Geiger counter to see how radioactive I was. Once it dropped below 7, I could leave.

For the next two hours I needed to drink lots of fluids and then I could start sucking on lemon drops to help my salivary glands produce saliva. I felt empty. I had a metallic taste in my mouth that lasted all day. Everything I ate had a metallic tinge to it. When I told my friends that I had to go through this treatment I often got big grins with wide eyes staring back at me. Whoa, will you have super hero powers? Like you’ll be able to snap a car in half like a twig or start fires by looking at something? Yes, I said, that is exactly what I’ll do. I stared back, my face a hardened super hero face.

While in isolation I read a lot, but my mind was fried with stress and lack of a thyroid hormone, I barely remember reading–Are You There God, it’s Me Margaret, by Judy Bloom. I could talk on the plastic wrapped phone that was in my room, but could not use my cell phone. I felt invisible somehow, like the pills I had turned me translucent. I fully lost a part of me, of my life. I wanted to be able to convey what I was going through; instead I felt lost in a mind that struggled daily for clarity.

Throughout the whole process I grappled with the fact that not even the doctors who I looked to for answers could tell me what I thought I needed to hear. Give me my expiration date, like a piece of food, please. I learned it was not that easy. In order to keep going, there was a certain amount of optimism that went along with the uncertainty of my overall outcome. After two days I was released to go home. I still could not be around people, but the radioactive threat was much less so I could be home among my own things. The isolation lasted another five days until I could go back to work.

I waited to have some sort of life-changing revelation, but it never came. Looking back, I think something did happen–the revelation came slowly. Everything in life is uncertain and yet there is room for optimism. After my first year of follow up appointments I came away cancer free. That’s cancer free–for now. I know that thirty percent of people with papillary thyroid cancer eventually have to go through treatment again. Realistically, I am hoping I will be part of the seventy percent who do not. I still have reminders of the disease: a partially numb neck, blood tests, and yearly neck ultra sounds, but it is manageable.

I stand on the Hawthorne Bridge overlooking the Willamette River and feel the cool breeze lightly caress my cheeks. The possibilities stretch out in front of me and I let the uncertainty wash over me.

Christi R. Suzanne is a writer who grew up in the dry heat of the Arizona desert. She moved to the Pacific Northwest over ten years ago for a mistier climate and now resides in Oregon. By day she works at a university as a web and communications professional. On her off hours she spends her time writing, playing soccer, and reading. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crack the Spine Literary Journal and Irreverent Fish Journal. Learn more here.